Rise & fall of deaf printers at the BJ

As World War II amped up and the military sucked millions of traditional employees out of the work force, businesses looked elsewhere to keep their operations going.

Women were enticed into the workplaces like never before. Rosie the Riveter became commonplace.

And companies looked to those the military did not absorb, including those labeled 4-F for wartime service.

Firms had been hiring deaf employees decades before Hitler terrorized Europe. But military personnel needs accelerated the shift to women and those men not snapped up by the service branches.

One group were those who were deaf. Akron rubber shops began hiring the hearing-impaired. So did the Beacon Journal.

Their names are familiar to those who worked at the BJ:

James Beldon

John Bradley

Eddie Cooper

Dale Efferson

Richard Fair

Mike Goins

Earl Hartman

Emil Hartman

Robert Leland

Paul Midkiff

Ron Sanderlin

Moses Vance

William Weigand

Brian Westlake

Cecil Kolb

Don Reppart

And others that Composing retiree Mike Herchek, former BJ sports editor Ken Krause and newsroom retiree John Olesky couldn’t think of off the tops of their heads.

Clubs for the deaf proliferated in America in the 1940s and 1950s. Akron’s Club for the Deaf -- today at 2307 Sackett Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls – was founded in 1943. Others sprang up in Cleveland, Warren, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Cincinnati.

Clyde Wilson, who died in 2011, was a leader in organizing sports activities for the deaf: Founded the Tri-State Deaf Softball Association Tournament in 1940 and the National Deaf Basketball Association Tournament in 1944, was all-star leftfielder for the Akron Silents baseball team in the 1950s and was secretary-treasurer of the Ohio Deaf Bowling League for 19 years. 

The Firestone retiree wrote the “Akron History of the Deaf” book.

The number of clubs for the deaf has plummeted nationally since, and those that remain – mostly in the Midwest and the South -- have ever-dwindling memberships. One man reported that, while visiting the Akron club, he was the youngest person there, at 68!

The Akron club, which bought its own building, was open 24/7 during World War II, to accommodate deaf workers at Goodyear Aircraft. Nearly 1,000 deaf men and women worked in Akron defense industries (the rubber shops converted for wartime purposes).

The International Typographers Union rapidly added deaf printers to its rolls, including at the BJ. When World War II ended and the rubber companies went back to peacetime activities and downsized the number of workers, their deaf employees shifted to print shops and places like the BJ.

Printing remained a solid occupation till cold type and computerized production eviscerated composing rooms around the nation. So women, minorities and the deaf flocked to government jobs.

To read more about the rise and decline of clubs for the deaf in America, click on http://communication.ucsd.edu/_files/Decline%20of%20Deaf%20Clubs.pdf